Compare this DLC from Bethesda to the Old World Blues DLC from Obsidian, for Fallout 3 and New Vegas, respectively. OWB is longer, smarter, deeper, has a larger and more diverse environment, better and more interesting goodies, more characters, more dialog, more choice, more total plot threads, a more consistent tone, and is much less ham-fisted when it needs to railroad the player.

Both developers have a reputation for releasing hilariously broken games, but at least Obsidian has the good grace to not insult your intelligence before the game crashes to desktop.

I disliked it, but it was probably a matter of overhyping. Ulysses was this shadowy figure always around, just one step ahead of you, since the original game, every time I heard about that “other courier” my expectations as to some kind of defining, amazing truth to be revealed when I finally confront him grew… Frankly I’m not even sure it was possible to satisfy those expectations when the DLC finally did come out.

I hated Ulysses. He just spouted pseudophilosophical bullshit about stuff that you (as the actual /player/) neither knew nor cared about. The idea of threading an overarching plot between the DLCs was excellent, but I don’t think it was very well-executed.

I agree. (To the extent I can, not having finished the DLC yet.) They tried to do with Ulysses and the Courier what they did with a bunch of characters and the Exile in KotOR II: imply backstory and PC (as separated from player) knowledge through writing and the PC’s own dialogue choices. (Yet another reason not to use the blasted ME dialogue wheel: it gets rid of stuff like that)

The problem was the Exile’s foreknowledge is made pretty explicit; aside from a brief gap in your memory, during which time you were drugged, your character remembers everything that’s happened. Until the DLC, no mention is made of the Courier’s past at all. The foreknowledge extends about as far back as immediately before taking the job, either leaving you to RP an amnesiac protagonist or a guy who doesn’t like talking about his past. Lonesome Road changes that, and there’s not really any lead up. Even the hook the old guy gives you when you ask about the previous courier is less “You have a history with this guy” and more “this other guy exists and is mad at you”

5:18 – Ashur chants “Don’t let ME keep you” two or three times. He did the same thing on my playthrough. I wouldn’t think that they tripled it in the same voice clip, so what’s the more programming-oriented side of the audience think? Three background events accidentally linked to the same idle dialog, maybe?

And they at least try to explore interesting themes and try new things with the narrative. Sure they tend to fall on their face, but I respect them a hell of a lot more than Bethesda for reaching for the stars and falling than reaching for mediocrity and succeeding.

So… maybe for the next game Bethesda ‘leaks’ a couple of draft copies of their sript and overplot to be nitpicked a little? Patching nits or rewriting dialogue to get your point across has to hurt less than releasing the A- of having a great idea that just needs better implementing, or testing, or whatever.

Crowdsourcing some of the quest files could spackle a lot of trouble early on. Just make sure the ‘leak’ is either super obvious or moderately obscure- post it as fanfic and make sure people look at it for constructive feedback.

Exaggerate much? Drek? Creating characters and dialogue might not be their strong point, but they excel at environmental storytelling and open world design. Things that Obsidian, for instance, struggles with.

I didn’t say it was drek. My stance on Bethesda is, to use a metaphor, they make a delicious and filling burger, and while it’s really good, they have not yet made a burger that wasn’t missing a little something.

They still make great burgers, but they could be the best hands down, would they just add cheese, or a pinch of onions or whatever.

Because in spite of all the harping, I still thought the main quest for Fallout 3 was good. Not as good as it could have been though. It was, judging from how things are being pointed out, in need of some explanatory dialogue from somebody to spackle the audience’s suspension of disbelief.

The DLC almost all have that flavor, too. What could have been is replaced by what is: interesting ideas with a wrongheaded execution.

And in this case, I think the griping is bore out of love; ignoring the Purists (three-quarter top down isometric view or it doesn’t count!) People loved it for what it was- we all just wish for what could have been.

(I had a full metaphor worked out along the burger theme, but it just made me hungry. Sorry.)

MM-
If you like it, you like it. Well done, you. I think their recent worlds are artificial in the extreme, and their design is so weak that it is an embarrassment. The last thing Beth did that doesn’t make my head physically hurt while playing was Morrowind. The world of Fallout 3 is incoherent to the point of being built from more plot hole than substance. The ability to wander anywhere isn’t all that handy (or impressive) if the world you’re wandering through makes no sense.

“Hey, cool! An abandoned Supermarket! That… still has a lot of food in it. After two hundred years. A five minute walk from a settlement.”

Ciennas-
Indeed you did not. I did. Because that’s what I think it is. Drek. My stance on Bethesda is that they’re McDonalds. That their burgers are burgers in name only at this point, and that it is principally their ubiquity which grants them success. Burger metaphors are cool.

This game did not have little problems (well, it had those too), it had big problems. Gaping holes in the plot and world which tumbled in to disrupting any attempt at playing a role (in a role-playing game, natch!), all piling and snarling up into one tangled mess. And almost all of those big problems were -intentional-. Someone at Beth sat down and consciously and with thought did it that way. Someone (many someones!) thought that Dr. Neeson was a rad character. Someone (many someones!) thought Little Lamplight was something that really should be in the game.

Corporate culture encourages a degree of everyone saying,” Drek? No, no. Your drek don’t stink if my drek don’t stink.” Having to actually critically examine something you’ve done weakens your power position with-in the hierarchy, it opens you up to criticism. Its safer to just baldly say,” Things are going great.”

Speaking as someone who was around NMA during the Bad Days, its manifestly possible to make a good Fallout game from a first person perspective. New Vegas pretty well proves that one. But Fallout 3 isn’t a good Fallout game.

For all that I can pick nits all day long, or complain about messed up lore or badly implemented ideas, I still had a great time playing this game. It was very solidly executed, even if it did have instances of plot induced stupidity, railroading, and outright broken pacing.

(For example; I still don’t get the point of leveling rewards from quests. I liked how Moira gave successful bonus completion objectives that rewarded the player well, for example. But I disliked how in, say, Oblivion, getting Chillrend or anything similar completely ruined them. But that is another topic for another day.)

I can actually see where leveling quest rewards comes from. The sandbox nature of the game means that people can encounter quests in any order, so a reward appropriate for level 10 will be game-breaking if gotten at level 1 and insulting at level 20. Taking away autoscaling wouldn’t actually solve the problem, either. It’s rare to be able to complete every quest at a given level before you outlevel them in games without autoscaling, and if it were then people who don’t want to would complain.

Continuing the burger theme, I’d compare Fallout 3 to a fairly decently made mom and pop burger. The meat and bun are both fine in their own right, but then Bethesda piles on the rotten cheese that is the writing and it just degrades the entire product.

I thought Dead Money had a cool concept (Casino heist movie… but the casino is haunted… in Fallout!) and is an excellent example of what I’ve assumed is called top down design and had very tight character writing wrapped around a central theme. I liked it.

Haven’t personally played Honest Hearts or Lonesome Road yet, so I’m reserving judgement until I have.

Honest Hearts was…okay I guess; it had it’s moments, but still was mostly bland. Gotta give it credit though, it had some beautiful environments.

Lonesome Road was great in my opinion. You get backstory on the Courier, and it does tie into some of the previous DLC (they all have tie-ins to each other and lead up to Lonesome Road). And you can’t beat the fact that you get to fire a nuke, and possibly two more if you wish.

For me, it was the Survivalist. It’s kinda interesting to compare the front-loading that usually happens in these sorts of open-world games. Usually, Bethesda puts a lot of the interesting stuff along the beginning of the main quest, because they know this is what the most people are going to see, and Obsidian followed this trend in the main game of FONV. But here, they took all this great writing and interesting backstory and scattered it out of the way all around Zion. On my first playthrough, I never even knew it was there.

But apart from that gem, I think Honest Hearts was kind of bland. Joshua is interesting, but the end of his arc that we’re seeing is entangled in the really dumb “moral choice” that the DLC tries to pass off as a dilemma. Old World Blues was much more consistently interesting, and Dead Money had a cool idea, but a terrible execution.

If you mean the execution scene, it’s not really as much about the morality of the choice as it is about the consequences it carries for Graham. The DLC didn’t really paint it as well as it could have, but it’s there. The real moral choice of the DLC is choosing between saving the Sorrows’ innocence by leading the tribes out of Zion and leading them to war to wipe out the White Legs from Zion. The DLC just lacks some compelling arguments for why keeping the Sorrows’ culture as it is would be more important than actually teaching them to stand up for themselves and saving Zion from the pillaging White Legs. All you get is just Daniel and his idealistic bias.

To me, Lonesome Road was the greatest of all the expansions. While Old World Blues has much more fun dialog, is non-linear and has more weird locations, I can not say “no” to a properly depressing setting, plus Deathclaws and Marked Men are a lot more fun to fight than roboscorpions.

Lonesome Road just captured the feel of a dead mutant-infested city more powerfully than Fallout 3 does at any point. I was soaking in the atmosphere any chance I could

Lonesome Road is similarly well written (YMMV). The cast is tight (three characters including the player), the place has history and the higher meanings are excellently portrayed. Honest Hearts is some kind of allegorical mess that loses its focus too much to say anything of importance. If it weren’t for the Ranger armour, I probably wouldn’t do it for my playthroughs.

The main thing I didn’t like for Lonesome Road was the fate of ED-E. His ending wasn’t all that clear, since his “sacrifice” wasn’t really one, I don’t think. And the first nuke you launch, really. There should’ve been a skill check around that, as Ulysses makes a big deal about your decision to launch it when, as a player, you know there was no other way to progress.

I did find the levels inventive and rather evocative. It has one of the better Deathclaw encounters for scaring the jibblies out of you when it happens for the first time.

As a player challenge, those friggin’ satchel charges are a royal (but welcome, if you’re high level) pain to keep an eye out for.

And the first nuke you launch, really. There should've been a skill check around that, as Ulysses makes a big deal about your decision to launch it when, as a player, you know there was no other way to progress.

That was part of the point Ulysses was trying to make. You just pressed that button without worrying about the consequences, beause you were curious about what was beyond. After all, you could have turned around and gone back at anytime.

I’m just playing devil’s advocate here, as I actually agree with you, but I highly suspect Ulysses would have launched his own nukes anyway once he realized you weren’t going to show up. I have a sneaking suspicion that he would have found a way to blame THAT on you also, using that special brand of logic he possesses.

I’ll be honest, I tend to dislike games that say “You have to do this in order to proceed. Now you’re a terrible person for having done it! You could have turned back and not kept playing the content that you paid for at any point!”

It’s like Father Elijah’s comment about why you went to the Sierra Madre, and how that means you deserve to wear a bomb collar and do as he says.

While I maintain my stance that it should’ve been skill-check-able in some way, unlike Dead Money, you COULD have turned around and not kept going. Lonesome Road allows you to go back to the Mojave and return at your leisure (or not).

Not that it’s really much of a choice. You paid for the DLC, and you’re going to finish it, by Crom!

The thing to remember is that it’s the character that is saying it. Not the game, or the game’s developers.

Elija is just plain bonkers. But he’s essentially justifying his own behaviout to himself: “It’s okay that he put the collar on you, after all it was your choice to follow the signal.”
As for Ulysses: He’s a broken man who’s trying to blame you for something that wasn’t you fault. His reasoning is wrong at it’s core and this argument of his is no different. That said, you have to admit that it was pretty irresponsible of you to blindly launch a nuke like that.

The Dead Money part really bugged me, though, because all three intelligent and speaking characters kept talking about how greed drew me to the Serra Madre and would keep me from leaving. In character, I heard a mysterious radio signal from an abandoned bunker and wondered what it was. Out of character, I would gladly have given up on getting the gold bars in exchange for getting out of this miserable ruin full of crazed people in hazmat suits, invincible speakers, poison clouds, and jerks before I started the Gala event. But I’d already gotten several levels and didn’t really want them to go to waste, so I trudged on. Also I cheated in 90 extra stimpacks. Used them all, plus the ones I got from the vending machines and lying on tables. That was a thoroughly miserable few hours.

Admittedly, the second time I did the DLC it was in order to get myself the caps to buy Gehenna on my melee/explosives character. I used noclip to bypass several of the puzzles and gigantic detours and am not sorry.

Originally, it wasn’t outside, I think. You’re in what used to be a room, but the roof and some of the walls are gone. Now, I don’t know much about nuclear missiles, but it still doesn’t make too much sense that the launch mechanism was so close to the surface (unless that’s how they’re making them nowadays).

It has been a while since I did Lonesome Road, but it was definitely outside the silo that actually launched. You can see the top of the silo opening up in front of and below you. If that ever was enclosed, it was a guardhouse. The launch controls should have been down near the missile, beneath the armored doors on the top, so that it’d take a direct hit on the silo to disable them.

That’s actually the point of building nuclear silos that way; it means that a nuclear first strike won’t prevent the target from launching a counter-attack even if all the nukes hit before the other side can launch theirs. Mutually Assured Destruction doesn’t work if a first strike can prevent retaliation, which is a big part of why the arms race happened.

I actually really enjoyed all the dlcs for New Vegas (that I’ve played at least, I haven’t done LR or the Gun Runners thing), OWB remains my favorite dlc for any game ever, and I really enjoyed the survival/heist thing of DM along with some great characters. HH had some beautiful environments and I was interested in the story of the Burned Man, plus all of them added some fun new perks, items and things to make.

I like GRA. My only objection is that the new item modifications don’t work with the ones available in the base game; if you want to upgrade your power fist, you need to buy one marked GRA. But you can take my ten types of shotgun ammo from my cold, dead hands.

Dead money was… not very good. The Cloud was annoying, the holograms were more annoying, the speakers were even worse, fighting Ghost People started out fun but got old really quickly, and the only character I liked was mute for most of it. Also, my first playthrough I went with energy weapons, so I had a terrible laser pistol and a holorifle that was out of ammo as my primary weapons.

I went completely off the rails in Honest Hearts, so all I can really say about it was that I kept getting lost looking for things.

Old World Blues is a matchless gem. Also, you get to take your stuff with you when you enter, which is a nice thing to have in a game heavily focused on collection of stuff. It’s just too bad Veronica couldn’t come along. It also feels like it’s really designed for every playstyle. Dead Money is mostly intended for unarmed, guns, and melee. Honest Hearts is too, but outside of Hardcore mode you can bring all the ammo you want. Old World Blues actually has unique shiny weapons you can use as much as you like for melee, unarmed, guns, and energy weapons. Explosives are less shiny, but there’s a reasonably large number of various grenades about and anyway if you use only explosives you’re gonna have a bad time.

Lonesome Road was also pretty good. For one thing, Ulysses just sounded great, and he did all of the talking. The Marked Men had enough diversity to be interesting opponents, and the environmental design was both mechanically and aesthetically solid except for that one bit with the collapsed buildings near the pond and the invisible guy. The Tunnlers were a bit underwhelming, though, because the Thermic Lance pretty much negated them.

I read up on the GRA’s modification items when I found out that they couldn’t be used on (some) non-GRA and most unique weapons. They said (according to the wiki) that the goal was to allow players to purchase and assemble weapons that would be on a par with the unique ones and allow for a different set of advantages for similar weapons.

Still, I would’ve liked to have known about that before I purchased the doggone upgrades. Of all the things where one of those popups (“You’ve just purchased your first GRA weapon modification!”) might have been useful, and they skipped it.

Plug: Sawyer’s Mod eliminates the (GRA) requirement for the weapons, in addition to a bunch of other stuff.
On that subject, I remember Sawyer mentioning that his goal with GRA was to release a weapon pack that wasn’t just a couple reskins. It added a bunch of cut weapons, filled in a couple missing uniques, and put in a few really expensive items (Bozar is ~10000 caps) to make the economy a little smoother.

Economics is no barrier once you figure out how to get all the gold bars out of the Sierra Madre, along with purchasing a ton of prewar money from that casino’s vendors before you depart (I think they have 20,000 each). :) My last playthrough I had over 100,000 caps when I finally fought the Battle of Hoover Dam.

If it weren’t for the fact that it sucks up so much of my time, I wanted to try out the mod that lets you run the Lucky 38 as an actual business, adding new features, catering to different clients, etc.

Let me guess: Melee (or Unarmed) with a good Repair skill? ‘Cuz Guns and Energy Weapons requires a lot more money to keep up with ammo and weapon variety. I’ve always found that I tend to keep around 6 ranged weapons for different purposes, (pistol, shotgun, sniper rifle, automatic weapon, high-DMG weapon for heavy armor, and then something fun, all of which usually require different ammo) but only 2 or 3 melee weapons. (one for speed, one for high damage, and maybe a Ballistic fist to push enemies away in emergencies)

Granted, I don’t play on hardcore which is really the only thing that lets me run around with that many guns, but the economy isn’t so bad since they require more upkeep.

I think the problem was that he was still trying to extract himself from that sidewalk, and couldn’t catch up with you.

Maybe he wasn’t embedded in the sidewalk. Maybe your sneak attack critical blew both his legs off from the knee down, and the guitar sting drowned out his screams as he tried to get steady enough to shoot… and then VATS expired.

This IS the episode where I nicknamed Reginald Cuftbert “Obvious Reasons”.

If you guys need to do another special PLEASE play OWB and Lonesome Road. I havent been watching the current SW series because I really want to play the game, but if there is any downtime in between WD and Dishonored for whatever reason, those 2 DLC were great.

Thinking of the confrontation with Moebius and that is immediately followed by the Think Tank, that’s a half-hour talking stint. The Lonesome Road would be a better choice but there’s a lot of long trudging segments in that one.

Josh summarizes well, so he could give us the short version and tease that viewers should play it themselves to hear the dialog. Then he can fast-forward through it with a counter that goes up by a tic every time the word “penis” is uttered.

“My daughter has a naturally acquired immunity to any form of mutation. She won’t turn into a Trog or a Ghoul or anything else.”

Um…HOW DO YOU KNOW THAT??? What, did you expose her to the trog plague, and then to radiation, and she just won’t turn?

How could you possibly know (or even suspect) a baby is immune to things she’s never been exposed to?

I realize the “ZOMG the cure is a baby! Would you kidnap a baby to save people?” moral choice is the thing they wanted to center this on. But to not so much to bother to handwave how we know the magic baby is magic is a little…Bethesda.

I’m guessing when the baby lived for a few months without developing the same scars and scabs all other people develop after some time in that area it was a good sign she might at least be more resistant?

Wait… So that baby is apparently immune to mutation. Somehow. I’m going to guess she means the ‘radiation/disease-induced, horrible 50ies science monster’ type of mutation and not ‘important term in genetics that is the foundation for practically all evolutionary biology’ mutation.

That aside… How did they find out? Did that baby get bitten by a super-mutant and didn’t turn into a monster or something? How can you tell? And how do they expect to extract a cure from the baby? Are they going to grow its lymphatic/marrow tissue on a damn rack and just try to inject its blood into random people to see if it helps?

I don’t think I’d call forcing you to steal a baby to free the slaves an “interesting” choice. “Retarded”, maybe. If there’s any actual connection between the two things, I didn’t hear it. How exactly is stealing a baby supposed to free the slaves in any way that shooting the guards and blowing the gate open wouldn’t? Because neither of those things depend on having a baby in your pocket; guns and explosives would work better.